Orwell's Rules for Clear Writing
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Here are George Orwell's six rules for clear writing, from his famous essay on Politics and English Language:
1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to
seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of
an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to
seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of
an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
posted by JT at Saturday, September 23, 2006
3 Comments:
"The reader who wants honestly to understand it, and not merely read into it his own ideas, needs some kind of vade mecum to provide the necessary background and explain unfamiliar words and allusions and strange turns of thought."
Is this want your post meant?
We certainly should eschew obfuscation!
Seems to me that rule #3 should read: If it is possible to cut a word, always do so.
Ah, the inherit irony of people trying to establish rules for language.
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